Today’s guest is EVGA GTX 670 Superclocked, with GPU that ticks at 967MHz and the memory at 1552MHz (6208MHz effectively). Note that the reference clocks are 915/1502MHz GPU/memory.

The Superclocked comes with a cooler that looks different from the reference version, but beneath the hood is the same beast. Although reference coolers aren’t usually the champs of cooling, Nvidia did a great job this time around. EVGA added to this further and designed a special bracket with bigger air exhausts.

We expect a nice overclock from the GK104. Although the Superclocked isn’t clocked beyond 1GHz, we expect EVGA’s Signature and FTW to thread that ground, and they’re coming soon as well. In case EVGA doesn’t do it however, you can always take the Superclocked and overclock it further. EVGA’s PrecisionX can come in handy with this and it already got a skin themed like the GTX 670 Superclocked.

Below is the GPU-Z report so you can check out the main features of the GTX 670.

EVGA cools its GTX 670 Superclocked with a blower style fan. The cooler is based on the reference design, although the hood makes it look like a brand new design. In general , the GTX 670 SC is similar to the GTX 680 Signature card we tested here.

Things get interesting once you flip the GTX 670 over. The PCB ends where the power connectors are but partners are free to implement own designs. In this case, EVGA stuck to the reference design.

You don’t need to remove cooling in order to see memory modules, or at least half of them. As you can see, the memory chips are placed in a way where every next chip is on the opposite side of the PCB. EVGA’s GTX 670 SC has eight memory chips with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. The card packs eight memory chips totaling at 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Good news for Nvidia fans is that the company kept the identical memory system used on its GTX 680 card, meaning four 64-bit memory controllers (256-bit memory interface) and 2GB of GDDR5 memory. The memory runs at 1502MHz (6008MHz effectively), again just like the GTX 680.

The mesh finish on the Superclocked’s cooler looks quite attractive, but closer inspection reveals it’s only a finish on plastic.

Blower style fan pushes air through the cooler and forces it out. Dual fan coolers are usually the best ones but they tend to leave hot air in the case. Anyhow, you’ll have to have adequate cooling if you want to throw in a GTX 670.

The plastic shroud, which we took off on the picture below, acts as a tunnel for air, channeling it from the fan, across the heatsink and out the I/O panel exhausts.

Although the GTX 670 is 24.1cm long, the PCB is only 17.2cm. Nvidia moved the power circuitry from its usual spot at the end of the card. This left empty space at the end of the PCB, so the company simply cut it off and saved on materials.

The memory on the PCB side isn’t cooled.

The heatsink is smaller but somewhat resembles the GTX 680’s heatsink (picture below).

Reference GTX 670 cards draw power via two 6-pin power connectors, just like the factory overclocked EVGA GTX 670 Superclocked. The reference TDP stands at 170W, but you can expect EVGA’s GTX 670 Superclocked to slightly top that due to the overclock.

It would be nice if EVGA offered its Backplate for this card, since it does many things. Namely, it makes the card look sweeter, reinforces the PCB and can even passively cool the memory.

The following photo shows how Nvidia did the part where the PCB and cooler meet. The fan is on a separate piece of plastic that’s fixed to the PCB via four screws.

EVGA GTX 680 SC Signature comes with two dual-link DVI outs, but only one is analog VGA-out capable. EVGA made things easy by marking the VGA-capable out with “DVI-I”. The plastic caps are also a nice touch. The I/O panel holds a standard HDMI and standard DisplayPort. Nvidia made sure not to lag behind the competition so Kepler based cards can run up to four displays simultaneously.

The air exhausts are wider than on the reference card. This allows for easier air movement, which can decrease temperatures by up to 3°C in best case scenarios.

GPU Boost is an important factor in the entire GTX 600 series, since it controls how much and when to auto-overclock the GPU. Below you’ll find GPU clocks we got playing Metro 2033 at 2560x1600. Base clock is the guaranteed clock while Boost and all other clocks depend on whether the GPU is working too hard, whether thermals are fine and whether consumption is optimal. EVGA GTX 670 Superclocked’s Base clock is 967MHz, Boost is 1046MHz. As you can see, clocks went up to 1189MHz. GPU Boost is good because the chip was used to the max and users don’t have to mess with overclocking since the card is already doing it itself.

Frame rate target is a function Nvidia launched with its GTX 680 series. If your favorite game isn’t very demanding and your graphics card is capable of spewing out a super high frame rate, then you can limit it to 60fps or lower. In turn, this decreases GPU temperatures, noise and your electricity bill as well.

Powerful graphics cards consume a lot of power, especially when the GPU constantly runs at full throttle. In case of the GTX 670 Superclocked card, we managed to slash consumption by 9W in Aliens vs. Predator by limiting the frame rate at 60fps. The resolution in question was 1920x1080. As you can see, the graph shows that our card dropped below 60fps at one point, rendering the frame rate target inactive.

The graph we see on the picture below (right) shows the workload and consumption when frame rate target is off. On the left you see what happens when frame rate target is on. GPU was utilized to about 100% until we turned on the frame rate target option, which significantly decreased it. Additionally, consumption also went down. The values you see were measured while playing Aliens vs Predator at 1920x1080.

We used EVGA’s Precision v.3.0.2. and this tool allows setting frame rate target to any value from 25fps to 120fps. Note: you must restart the application for the setting to apply.

GPU Boost technology takes care of the card so overclocking is not as simple. Kepler GPU has two clocks – one being the Base clock, which is the guaranteed clock, while the other is Boost clock, average auto-overclocking clocks. Whenever there’s room to do so (depending on GPU workload, consumption and thermals), GPU Boost will auto-overclock. When we want to overclock the GPU, we increase the Base clock and hope that GPU Boost technology will “grant” our request. Unless we overdid it, GPU Boost will make sure to squeeze out more juice from the chip.

As the name suggests, EVGA’s GTX 670 Superclocked is a factory overclocked card. Its GPU runs at 967MHz, and the memory at 1552MHz.

With the launch of its GTX 670, EVGA made a new skin for its PrecisionX v.3.0.2. tool (picture below).

We had no trouble pushing the GPU by another 100MHz and the memory by 150MHz via PrecisionX tool. We moved the Power Target slider to 122 percent, the GPU Clock Offset to +100MHz, sped up the fan to 65 percent RPM (around 2670RPM) and increased the voltage from reference 988mV to 1050mV. The fan could be heard at 65 percent RPM, although it’s not too loud. When in AUTO mode, the fan was rarely audible and even then was quite unobtrusive. The fan is almost inaudible when the card is idle.

Maximum EVGA PrecisionX-allowed voltage is 1175mV. We didn’t have much time do dedicate to overclocking but we’ve noticed that after changing GPU Clock Offset by +120, upping the voltage had an adverse effect on stability. We believe that it’s down to the GPU Boost technology. Still, GPU Boost does its job quite well because it still auto-overclocked even after our additional 100MHz GPU overclock. So, we measured clocks all the way up to 1288MHz.

EVGA GTX 680 SC Signature uses reference cooling styled to suit EVGA’s image. The cooler itself is the reference one with wider air exhausts on the bracket.

The cooler is quite good when it comes to noise. When the card is idle, you’ll barely hear it. You’ll also hear it when the card gets hot, but nothing too loud and a job very well done. GPU temperatures were at about 80°C under load, which is comparable to the GTX 680’s thermals. Note however that the GTX 680 is noisier than EVGAs GTX 670 Superclocked.

Although it ticks at higher clocks, EVGA’s GTX 670 Superclocked’s consumption isn’t as high when considering the performance.

EVGA was right on time for the GTX 670 launch with its Superclocked card, which comes overclocked to 967MHz and its memory at 1552MHz (6208MHz effectively). Note that the reference clocks are 915/1502MHz GPU/memory. Higher clocks of course mean better performance but overclocked or not – the GTX 670 is a great bang for the buck. Furthermore, the card allows for using up to four displays simultaneously.

Suggested pricing for the reference design is €329 EX VAT or $399 USD. In return, you get a graphics card that will support your 2560x1600 habit.

Compared to the GTX 570, you can expect about 40 percent better performance. The GTX 470 is 1.5-2 times slower than the GTX 670. It’s not looking rosy for AMD as the GTX 670 manages to challenge even the HD 7970 occasionally.

EVGA GTX 670 Superclocked is based on the reference design, with the exception of higher clocks and cooler makeup. The cooler is quiet in idle mode and quiet enough during gaming. You will hear it occasionally but it’s not too loud. We can say the same about the thermals as well.

We’ve seen that many partners are ready with their factory overclocked GTX 670 graphics cards and EVGA sure joined in on the fun. The company’s offer currently lists the following GTX 670s:

EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2GB: $399.99

EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2GB Superclocked: $419.99

EVGA GeForce GTX 670 4GB: $469.99

EVGA GeForce GTX 670 4GB Superclocked: $489.99

As you can see, our today’s card is priced about $20 higher than the reference version. The added price goes on the factory overclock, makeover and the wide exhaust bracket that improves cooling. The card is backed by a 3 year Limited warranty with an option to pay for an extension to 5 or 10 years. All in all, the $20 price difference is a small price to pay for a card that promises to become many a gamer’s ally.

Our previous review covered Saphire Radeon HD 6850 running at reference clocks, whereas our today’s test subject is Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic. As the name suggests, Toxic cards come with Toxic cooling but Sapphire surprised us by using HD 6870’s PCB for its HD 6850 Toxic. Although Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic looks different than the HD 6870, it is only due to the shroud as the cooler design is identical to the HD 6870’s.

HD 6850's GPU reference clocks are at 775MHz, with memory running at 1000MHz (4000MHz effectively). The HD 6850 Toxic on the other hand runs at 820MHz for the GPU and 1100MHz for the memory (4400Mhz effectively).

Sapphire HD 6850 runs at reference clocks but Sapphire has made a few changes to their design that separates this card from the other reference AMD designs.

Below you see the GPUZ screenshot, confirming the clocks on our Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic card.

Sapphire HD 6850 card is based on BartsPro core, which compared to the previous generation offers improvements on the field of tessellation, Eyefinity, video decoding and consumption. UVD engine is now in UVD 3 version; there’s also HDMI 1.4a for 3D Blu-ray as well as two DisplayPort 1.2 outs. The DisplayPorts support Multi-Stream technology, allowing up to 6 monitors to be used via only two DisplayPorts.

Sapphire’s HD 6850 Toxic comes factory overclocked – the GPU runs at 820MHz with memory at 1100MHz (4400MHz effectively). As you can see from the picture below, Toxic is longer than Sapphire’s reference HD 6850. Factory overclocked Toxic cards use the HD 6870’s PCB.

Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic measures 9.5 inches in length (24.2cm), which is similar to HD 6870 or HD 5850 cards. Sapphire HD 6850 on the other hand is 8.5 inches in length (21.7cm). We’re talking about wide, dual slot cards that will fit in almost any smaller case.

Since HD 6870’s PCB is used, Toxic also uses two 6-pin power connectors, unlike the HD 6850 which has only one. Despite consumption being similar to that of the HD 6850, you’ll have to connect the second 6-pin connector. The reason is that the second connector is for the extra demands caused by the overclock.

The fan blows most of heated air outside of the computer case through the rear of the video card shroud. Fan speed regulation can be performed via the Catalyst Overdrive or any other tool you may prefer. Sapphire's TriXXX tool will allow for GPU voltage changes. You can download it here, provided you register your card.

The HD 6850 sports 256-bit memory bus like the HD 5800 series rather than 128-bit on the HD 5770. Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic card is equipped with 1024MB GDDR5 memory. The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix (model number H5GQ1H24AFR-T2C). They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (effective 5000 MHz).

The I/O panel features two DisplayPort 1.2 connectors, one HDMI 1.4a and two DVI connectors (one of them is single-link with maximum resolution of 1920x1200).

Just like the Radeon HD 6870, Radeon HD 6850 Toxic comes with only one CrossFire connector. This means that you can only use two cards in 2-way CrossFire.

Radeon HD 6850 consumes 127W at max so it will require one 6-pin power connector, ali Sapphire HD 6850. As we said earlier, Toxic has two 6-pin power connectors.

Within the box (made of recycled paper), you’ll find the standard stuff, Crossfire Interconnect Cable, a DVI to VGA Adapter, two four pin to six pin power cables, as well as an HDMI 1.4a cable (1.8m) and a mini-DP to DP Adapter.

Intensive operation resulted in HD 6850 Toxic temperatures going up to 77°C. We were happy with the noise levels on the card. Same can be said about reference Sapphire HD 6850, but its lower clocks, lower voltages and specially designed cooling result in significantly lower temperatures than those we measured on the Toxic.

Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic

Sapphire HD 6850

Sapphire TriXXX allowed us to push the GPU voltage to 1281mV, which helped in pushing the GPU all the way up to 952MHz. This is the maximum we achieved with fan at AUTO settings, where the fan still was not loud.

Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic OC with auto fan

If you want to squeeze out the last drop of performance from HD 6850 Toxic, you’ll have to increase the fan RPM as well as GPU voltages. Note that overclocking results may vary from card to card.

Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic OC with manual fan

It looks like we didn’t strike lucky and get a super-overclocker as our test HD 6850 Toxic didn’t like going beyond 987MHz. We had to increase fan RPM to achieve 987MHz, but the fan was already too loud for us to enjoy our overclock.

Power Consumption

Sapphire's HD 6850 consumes around 15W when idle, which is comparable with the green camp’s GTX 460. During operation, HD 6850's maximum consumption was about 25W less than on the GTX 460 1GB. Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic’s idle consumption is comparable to the rest of the HD 6850 pack, but note that higher clocks mean about 20W higher consumption. Additional overclock to 987MHz increased consumption by about 60W.

Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic is pretty different from the reference HD 6850. First of all, the card comes factory overclocked – its GPU runs at 820MHz whereas the memory runs at 1100MHz (4400MHz effectively). Just to remind you, reference clocks are 775MHz for the GPU and 1000MHz for memory (4000MHz effectively).

Another important difference is the non-reference cooling. Furthermore, Toxic uses HD 6870’s PCB and is thus HD 6850 Toxic is 2.5cm longer than the reference HD 6850.

Toxic’s cooling is efficient when it comes to cooling the GPU, but it isn’t quieter than Sapphire HD 6850 solution. While both cards remain relatively quiet during operation, they’re not inaudible.

Large cooling, HD 6870’s PCB and two power connectors promised maximum overclocking but we didn’t manage to score 1GHz for the GPU. However, 987MHz was quite fine and it allowed for 22% better gaming results.

Price difference between Sapphire HD 6850 Toxic and Sapphire HD 6850 is less than €10, which buys you higher clocks and better performance. However, if you like to overclock yourself then Sapphire’s reference HD 6850 will do just fine.

As far as performance goes, AMD’s architectural improvements resulted in pretty good DirectX 11 gaming, catching up with the likes of HD 5850 and GTX 460 1GB in some benchmarks. Compared to the previous, HD 5800 generation, HD 6850’s improved tessellation performance will allow for pleasant gaming at 1920x1080.

If you’ve stuck to DirectX9 or DirectX10 hardware so far and you’re looking for a nicely priced graphics card that will allow for playing all the latest titles, then Sapphire HD 6850 and Sapphire HD 6870 are definitely cards you might want to look at.

Prolimatech Genesis is a new cooler in the high-end segment of the CPU cooling market. Its design, as you can see, is pretty unusual but we’ve heard it packs a mean punch and we set out to see whether that is indeed the case.

Genesis' concept was talked about for around two years, but Prolimatech kept its promise an finalized the mass production step. As you can see, the cooler is anything but ordinary.

Judging by size alone, Genesis should definitely do a good job, but its size might turn out to be a hindrance for those with smaller cases. Furthermore, Genesis’ size is in accordance with its price, meaning that it does not come cheap. You can find it priced at €60 at caseking.de, here.

Although Genesis’ packaging is large as a PSU one, we though the simplicity and color scheme were quite refreshing. Let’s hope Genesis “refreshes” our components as well.

As you can see from the picture, the box holds components for mounting the cooler on AMD’s and all popular Intel’s sockets. Specs say that Genesis measures 146mm x 216.5mm x 160mm.

Genesis cooler encompasses tower and blow-down cooling all in one neat package. The heatsink, as you can see, is split in two parts - one part is perpendicular to the CPU whereas the other is parallel to the motherboard. Genesis should be efficient even when paired up with low-RPM fans and its unusual design allows for using up to three large 14cm fans.

Just to put things in perspective, the picture below shows how Genesis looks when mounted on a motherboard. The box says that Genesis is an „all-in-one Super-Sized CPU cooler“ and we agree wholeheartedly.

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The heatsink measures (L)146mm X (W)216.5mm X (H)160mm and weighs in at 800g. Genesis has pretty standard weight for a high-end CPU cooler but it could very well be the widest CPU cooler on the market. Genesis supports Intel sockets 775, 1156 and1366 but you can mount it on AMD’s AM2/AM2+/AM3 sockets as well thanks to the included AMD mounting mechanism.

The cooler does not come with fans, but it does feature two 14cm/12cm fan brackets so setting up the fans will be a breeze

Genesis has six heatpipes. Cooler base is nickel-plated and comes with mirror finish, much like Prolimatech’s earlier coolers.

The two Genesis heatsinks are perpendicular to one another, which means that Genesis utilizes every possible bit of airflow.

Mounting the Genesis cooler is not complicated and can easily be performed by following the included written instructions, provided the cooler is compatible with your motherboard of course. For this reason we’ll skip the mounting procedure and show the Genesis mounted on Asus Rampage II Extreme motherboard.

Genesis packaging says that it will cool your CPU, RAM, MOSFET and Northbridge chipset, where our testing has proven it is indeed the case. The picture clearly shows how Genesis cools the memory.

Prolimatech has been making CPU coolers with split heatsinks, such as Megahalem or Armageddon coolers. However, Genesis’ heatsink is not only split but the parts are completely detached from one another. We’ve already said that heatsink measures (L)146mm X (W)216.5mm X (H)160mm. Note that it is designed in order to fit on most motherboards.

However, not all motherboards will like this cooler. For instance, we had difficulties mounting the Genesis on EVGA’s FTW 3 motherboard due to the board using a tall VRM heatsink. We practically couldn’t mount the cooler until we removed the motherboard’s heatsink and replaced it with smaller heatsink modules. VRM temperatures didn’t exceed 67°C, which is in normal limits.

Prolimatech pretty neatly bent several heatpipes and routed them over memory slots. Heatsink has a slim design, with plenty of space below for tall memory modules with heatsinks, such as Corsair Dominator series.

The cooler’s slim design definitely helps with any potential conflicts with memory modules, but bear in mind that you will have to remove the Genesis before replacing the memory. However, Genesis can be removed by unscrewing two screws so that should not take up too much of your time.

We managed to mount Kingston's memory modules without taking the cooler off.

In most cases, though dependent on motherboard design, Genesis will take two 14cm fans in a push-pull configuration (it’s also possible to mount two 12cm fans).

Testing

We performed our testing in Corsair Obsidian 800D case with three reference fans running at 900RPM (room temperature about 22°C). Our weapons of choice were EVGA’s X58 FTW3 motherboard and Core i7 930 CPU. The temperatures were measured at reference 2.9GHz as well as after our overclock (we pushed the CPU to 3.6GHz).

For the first test with Genesis we used one 14cm fan. We’re talking about Thermalright’s TR-TY 140 fan (900~1300RPM) which ended up being enough for excellent Genesis performance. The case’s rear panel houses a 14cm fan that pushes the air out, so we’ve got ourselves a neat push-pull setup here.

We’ve already mentioned that the 14cm, 900 RPM fan on the case’s rear panel does great to improve cooling and ultimately, adding another fan on the coolers tower heatsing made little difference, so we strapped Genesis with one more fan but we mounted it on the heatsink above the memory modules and you can see it on the picture below.

We used Prime95 to put a 100% load on all Core i7 930’s cores, so bear in mind that we’re talking about a scenario that will most probably never happen. We measured temperatures on all four cores using AIDA64 (the successor to Everest), and put average values in the tables. We used Gelid’s GC Extreme paste.

After overclocking the CPU to 3.6MHz, Genesis took the top spot.

Genesis is Prolimatech’s new high-end CPU cooler with excellent performance that definitely walks in the footsteps of Prolimatech’s Megahalems, Armageddons and Super Megas. This time however, Prolimatech chose to step away from the standard tower design and designed the Genesis in a way for it to mount a strong challenge for the king of high-end cooling. Apart from excellent CPU cooling, Genesis will take care of components around the CPU socket in a much better way than classic tower CPU coolers.

Standard Genesis packaging does not include fans, but Caseking.de who kindly provided our test sample said that they will offer several versions with included fans. You can find the link and some pictures below.

Before our photo gallery, we must say that we were blown away by Genesis’ performance. This means that two fans will most likely provide some serious cooling performance, the kind that will be really difficult to beat by the competition. Provided your motherboard is compatible with it and you don’t mind shelling out extra few bucks, you seriously cannot go wrong with Prolimatech Genesis.

Genesis hit the shelves today and you can find it hereprice at 60 euro without the fans. It definitely does not come cheap, but we're confident that the cooling performance will make it worth your while. We would recommend the Genesis to enthusiasts as it packs a mean cooling punch and in that respect thoroughly deserves to be dubbed a "Fudzilla Recommended" piece of equipment. However, if you think that your ideal cooling should not cost as much, you might want to check out Prolimatech's Armageddon which goes for 44 euro, here.